The longet busride of our lives...

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Hallo again!

Tonight is our second night in Galway, on the west coast of the island. We are in apartments that face the bay, and I think my group of 3 girls is in the best one! We're in the penthouse, so we have two little porches and a huge terrace, all looking out over different parts of the city and the bay. We have two bedrooms, which combined comfortably house 5 people. Kristen and I are in one room and Andrea's got her own room because she was feeling sick yesterday. 😞 Today she's better, though!

We have a heat vent that warms up our bathroom, which is fantastic, but doesn't quite make up for the fact that the water that comes out of the showerhead/tub faucet is only lukewarm and gets cool after about 10 minutes. :/ We also have a full kitchen with a hot-pot type thing that has a more adult name but I can't remember what it is. I had 2 cups of my Swiss Miss in about 3 minutes. 😊 And then we have a living room that looks out onto the terrace and the city. THIS MORNING, AROUND 8, I OPENED THE BLINDS AND SAW THE MOON SETTING ON THE HORIZON!!!! Sooooo cool! So I squeaked and ran back to the bedroom to get Kristen and the camera. 😊

By 8:30 we were on our private bus with 18 seats (there are 18 people in our group, so it's a cozy fit). We didn't get OFF of the bus until 6 tonight. We were on before the sun came up and we didn't get off for good until the sun was down for about an hour. hmmmmmmmmm. We drove north to the counties of Mayo, Cong, and Connemara, all of which are beautiful and mountainous. Since there was poor circulation in the bus the windows were all fogged up about 5 minutes into the drive, and they were still foggy when we got off tonight. We stopped at a handful of places to tour old abbeys and take pictures of overflowing rivers (I have several pictures of me in front of the landscapes, just to prove I was actually there!) and big mountains. Our museum visit didn't work because Kate didn't realize the museum isn't open on Mondays. And today's Monday! Hooray! No museum visit! Boooooo!!!! NO LUNCH! So we drove for another few hours until we found a tiny grocery store - we shopped for about 10 minutes, and then we drove for another few hours until we found the pub used in The Field where we spilled most of our pints and half-pints all over the pub floor. I'm sure the locals thought we were classy! 😊

By the end of the bus trip, since we were very tense and tired and hungry, we were ready to get off. The countryside was absolutely stunning, and I enjoyed being off the bus....unfortunately the time on the bus was a little more than the time off of the bus. Tomorrow we head south of Galway to the Burren which is a LOT of cool-looking limestone, tour more of the middle of nowhere (which really is cool and lots of fun, even though I'm sure I'm doing a good job of convincing you otherwise...), and go to the CLIFFS OF MOHER. The cliffs are several hundred feet high and drop straight down into the ocean! Very cool.

Kristen and I are still healthy and loving the tours! And I can't wait to see everybody at home! I'll have the pictures ready for you!

Love you! And see you in.....tuesday/wednesday/thursday/friday/saturday....5 days! Yay!

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